Self-Reported Delinquency and Natural Parents-Stepparent Youth Relations

The present study investigated relationships between youths' self-reported delinquency and natural parents or stepparents. One-thousand-forty-one randomly selected male and female students completed the questionnaire. All were enrolled in grades 7-12 in an urban Southern California public school district and came from a variety of social class backgrounds. On the bivariate level, males with stepparents reported a slightly higher rate of more serious delinquency tan females. Family status was found to be interrelated with delinquency. However, when the youth-parent relations variable was added, the stepparent delinquency and social status variance were statistically non-significant. The multivariant analysis indicated the total amount of time spent weekly with parents was the strongest predictor of reduced delinquency, especially for males.